MILAN (AP) – Armed men in two speedboats took off with women and children after a rubber dinghy carrying 112 people trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea exploded off the coast of Libya, an aid group said Friday.
Hundreds of men and boys who were in the overcrowded boat jumped into the sea, Doctors Without Borders said. The group’s ship, the Geo Barents, reached the site in international waters on Thursday, rescuing 83 unaccompanied men and children, pulling 70 of them from the sea.
Two speedboats, which identified themselves as belonging to the Libyan Coast Guard, were nearby. The immigrants then said that some of the men had fired a shot. No deaths were reported.
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Another speedboat had taken 24 women and children on board, telling Geo Barents that they would give them if the men were rescued, Doctors Without Borders spokesman Maurizio Debbane said.
But instead, they quickly left. It is not clear who these armed men were and what had happened to the women and children.
The rescued migrants were from Eritrea, Yemen and Ethiopia.
Doctors Without Borders, known by the French acronym MSF, asked the authorities and organizations in the region to help reunite the families, stressing that Libya is not a safe place. MSF also said that what happened was unacceptable and had “endangered the lives of many people, and separated entire families.”
“Many people were in a rubber boat that was full of people when it exploded, and they were threatened by armed men, they shot,” Maria Eliana Tunno, a psychiatrist in Geo Barents, said in the video. “They lived a terrible life separated from their wives and daughters, who had been taken away.”
A man jumped into the water trying to find his wife and two children, a four-month-old and a ten-year-old.
Tunno described the rescued men and boys as “extremely tired, desperate and shocked,” adding that many had experienced torture and ill-treatment in Libya.
More than 62,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea so far this year, according to Interior Ministry figures. This is a significant drop from the more than 152,000 who arrived at the same time in 2023.
The United Nations reports that 2,124 migrants have died trying to make the dangerous Central Mediterranean crossing this year.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government has adopted policies aimed at reducing migration to Italy, promoting multi-million euro agreements with Tunisia and Egypt aimed at stopping the exodus, and building a facility in Albania where it hopes to check people coming from outside the borders of Europe. .
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Thomas reported from Rome.